THE DECISION: The Role of Leaders on the Battlefield
My interest in decision-making is rooted in watching my Father, who was a professional baseball manager, make dedisions in baseball games. It was a daily thing I did as a kid as I tried to understand what my Dad did during a baseball game… how he tried to engineer in-game matchups to his team’s favor that would help them win. That bias was in my head as I watched Marine Corps lieutenants that we trained in Quantico struggle to be decision-makers in a very unique world that nothing really prepared them for. This class was an attempt to prepare them for that world… and I’ve always enjoyed the subject… decision-making in real time… in a dynamic environment… where the leader only has a fraction of the information required… yet has to make a decision NOW! And then has to make subsequent decisions to turn the event into a Win. Fascinating stuff to me.
I concieved of, and then began teaching this class, in Quantico, Virginia at The Infantry Officer’s Course in the summer of 1990 if memory serves me correctly. The class sought to remedy a gap in the instruction of infantry lieutenants… and that was that they received absolutely zero instruction on the unique world they were entering as decision makers… a world that was nothing like anything they’d done in their lives.
It was a hit from the first time I taught it. I recently presented the class at the Virginia Military Institute at the request of their Superintendent, LtGen David J. Furness, USMC (ret). When I arrived home, I recreated the class on video and thought I’d share it.
CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO WATCH THE YOUTUBE VIDEO
The class seeks to give any student embarking on a career as a military leader a basic understanding of:
- Decision-making in the very unique world they’ve entered
- The role TIme plays in decision-making… that all decision-making takes place IN-TIME
- The role of the Combat Orders Process in communicating a decision
- Our duty as leaders, to make decisions and issue orders in a timely manner so that the people risking their lives to execute these orders have the time to disseminate the order, back brief the order and then rehearse so that their execution is as deliberate as it can be
CLASS OUTLINE:
- INTRODUCTION: Col Antony Zinni, USMC —- “Making the wrong decision is never the problem… the worst thing that can happen IS HAPPENING… you’re making NO DECISION.”
- PART 1: The Leader Who Saved the Union at Gettysburg
- PART 2: The Leader’s Mandate… Decision-Making IN-TIME
- PART 3: The Decision-Making Environment
- PART 4: The Process… From Start to Finish
- PART 5: Decision-Making Techinques
- PART 6: The Leader as a Synthesizer IN-TIME
- PART 7: EXECUTION… Doing It
- PART 8: The AAR/Critique (Mac’s Way)
- PART 9: Final Thoughts
Click HERE to dowload the PDF of the class.
I hope you enjoy the discussion and the subject as much as I do.